It isn’t the first and it certainly won’t be the last. Despite all the high-tech software and hardware, human error can still scare the market. While normality returns, there is the risk of being burned as traders try to catch the falling knife. Following the latest “fat finger" trade, here’s a list of some of the market’s biggest mishaps over the past two years.

1. Overnight futures for the FTSE 100 jumped 1.4 per cent, before paring back gains. Traders said the surge was an accidental ‘‘fat finger’’ – and that the size and volume suggested ‘‘an institution was behind it’’.

2. In late January this year, a “fat finger" trade caused HSBC shares to jump 10 per cent. The move, believed to have been caused by human error, briefly flipped London’s FTSE 100 Index into positive territory, before HSBC shares were suspended for five minutes and orderly trade resumed thereafter. The trader responsible may have lost £400,000 ($727,000) in less than 30 seconds.

3. The Shanghai Stock Exchange surged almost 6 per cent in three minutes last August, after a series of orders from Everbright Securities. China’s regulatory authority said rather than a human error, Everbright’s computer system had design flaws that didn’t limit orders and prices. Big companies such as PetroChina jump the maximum daily limit of 10 per cent before easing back.

4. In October 2012, Google had $22 billion wiped from its value due to a printer’s error. Shares in the world’s biggest search engine company were suspended for two-and-a-half hours after an accidental email revealed its quarterly results early.

5. In August 2012, RBS Securities admitted that a US-based trader caused a spike in the euro against the Swiss franc through a mistaken transaction that triggered a chain of computer-generated trades – like falling dominoes.

6. In the same month, Knight Capital Group was driven to the edge of bankruptcy after a software glitch caused its trading program to go haywire and spew out a flood of orders at the start of trade at the NYSE on August 1. The company later announced that the “technology issue" had resulted in a realised pre-tax loss of about $US440 million – a figure it estimated would translate into a loss of $US270 million after taxes. Analysts were astounded that it took 45 minutes for the problem to be fixed and trading to return normal.

7. It took just minutes for the share price of technology giant Apple to plunge 9 per cent after a single erroneous trade at a low price on March 23, 2012, before a “circuit breaker" was activated. At first it was unclear whether a “fat finger" or computers were to blame, although it was later announced that a software bug was behind the transaction. On this occasion, Apple resumed trade soon after the fall and was able to recover the loss throughout the day, but BATS Global Markets, whose computer systems were behind the glitch, was forced to cancel its initial public offering as a result.

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8. Equity markets are not the only place where strange trades can cause disruption. On April 30, 2012, gold prices suddenly dropped early in the US session, raising questions about a single large sell order that triggered the fall, as well as a short trading halt in gold futures. Speculation was rife that the order was the result of a “fat finger", but it’s still not clear whether the trade was mistaken or intentional.

9. The Tokyo Stock Exchange has had a series of technological issues, including on August 7, 2012, when derivatives trading was halted for more than 90 minutes. Luckily, trading volume was low at the time, limiting the disruption. “Systems problems" were blamed for the outage, which was the second big glitch to hit the TSE that year. On February 2, 2012, cash-share trading was halted in the morning session in the midst of reporting season because of a breakdown in the exchange’s data distribution system.

10. Australia isn’t immune either. On February 20, 2012, an unusual move on the S&P/ASX 200 caused the sharemarket to plunge 30 points in less than one second – although the losses were quickly recovered – and a “fat finger" was the suspected culprit. That incident and others led the Australian Investments and Securities Commission to warn brokers to watch out for mistaken trades that could disrupt the market.